30 Cheat Codes to Beat Every Level of Life

Video games have cheat codes. Up, up, down, down, and suddenly you've got 30 extra lives. Well, after 6 decades on this planet, I've discovered that life has cheat codes too. It's just that nobody ever hands you the list. So I made one. I've written 7 books about human behavior, raised 3 children, stayed married for 3 decades, and made, conservatively, 10,000 mistakes. What survived? Are 30 cheat codes in 5 levels. How to decide, how to deal with people, how to get things done, how to work, and how to live. One might require avoiding your relatives, and the most important one comes last. Let's start the game. Quick note before we start, I cover a lot in this video, so I put all 30 cheat codes on a single page that you can download for free. The link is below. Level 1 decisions. Code number 1: Make your decisions using an ordinary Tuesday, not a fantasy Saturday. When you're choosing a house, a job, a city, any big thing, don't select it based on its best day. Hey, that house has an amazing entertainment space you'll use 4 times a year. That job comes with a glamorous conference in Lisbon. That sounds great, but what will the commute feel like on a Tuesday? What will you actually be doing on the job at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon? What will it feel like to cook in that kitchen on a regular Tuesday night? When I left working in the White House to work for myself, this was the standard I used. Sure, I'd give up a few days each year of extreme excitement, but 51 out of 52 Tuesdays would be better. Code 2: For reversible decisions, decide fast. Don't spend 3 weeks agonizing over something you can undo in 3 minutes. Some decisions are one-way doors. Once you walk through, there's no easy return. Those deserve time and care. But most decisions are two-way doors. Take the class, go on the date, accept the brief gig. If it doesn't work, walk back through. Save your agonizing for decisions that actually deserve it. Number 3, ask, what would change my mind? If your answer is nothing, you're not thinking. You're defending. Before starting an important project, taking a new job, or moving to a new city, find one smart person who thinks it's a terrible idea. You don't have to obey them, but you do have to hear them. Number 4: Before deciding what to do, ask what happens if you do nothing. Inaction itself is a decision, one with consequences. But some problems disappear when you stop feeding them. Some conflicts resolve themselves. Some opportunities become clearer with time. That's why in certain situations, the best advice isn't, don't just stand there, do something. It's, don't just do something, stand there. Number 5, make lots of small bets. Take risks whose upside could change your life and whose downside won't ruin it. Launch the side project, submit the article, check out the conference, try the idea on a small scale. You don't always find the big thing through one heroic leap. Sometimes you find it through a portfolio of small experiments. Most of life is shots on goal. And number 6, judge decisions by how you made them, not only by how they turned out. A smart decision can produce a bad result. A dumb decision can get lucky. So don't let one good outcome convince you that your process was brilliant. And don't let one bad outcome convince you that your process was flawed. Ask, did I use the information available? Did I consider alternatives? And did I understand the risks. You don't control the universe, but you do control the decision. Level 1 complete. Level 2 is about people, and it opens with the mistake I've made more than any other. 7th, before solving someone's problem, ask what they want from you. Advice, help, or just company? Not every problem somebody tells you about is an invitation to solve it. Yeah, sometimes they want an answer. But many times they just want to be heard. So before going into superhero problem-solving mode, ask. Number 8, assume incompetence before malice. What looks like hostility is often distraction, disorganization, or somebody having a terrible day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people are jerks with bad motives, no question. But the world contains fewer enemies and more overwhelmed people than we think. So begin with the more generous explanation. You can always revise it if the evidence changes. Number 9, notice who asks you questions. Curiosity is an underrated diagnostic for friendship, for romance, for collaboration. So pay attention to who is genuinely curious about you and pay even closer attention to who never is. Number 10, don't keep score in relationships you want to keep. I called last time. I paid for dinner. I helped her move. He still hasn't thanked me. Careful. Generosity stops being generosity when you maintain a spreadsheet. Strong relationships become roughly reciprocal over time, but they aren't always equal in every moment. Number 11, build an infrastructure for friendship. Hey, let's get together sometime. That's how people slowly disappear from your life. So make Recurring plans with people you care about. A monthly dinner, a Saturday morning walk, a standing phone call. I have a regular gathering with 6 good friends where we eat, drink, and offer one another advice. Without a recurring date, I suspect we'd see one another twice a year and spend half the evening saying, hey, we should do this more often. And when you do want to see somebody, make a specific invitation. Let's have a beer Thursday at 6 beats Let's get together. One is a plan. The other is goodbye in slow motion. Number 12: Eliminate toxic people. If someone consistently diminishes you, damages you, or poisons your life, get rid of them. Unfortunately, this includes relatives. Shared DNA isn't a license to treat you poorly. Distance isn't always cruel. Sometimes distance is an act of wisdom. Okay, deep breath. Level 3 is lighter. It's about actually getting things done. Level 3, productivity. Number 13, define done before you begin. Otherwise, every project quietly becomes an infinite undertaking. What will finished look like? Decide that first. And when you're near the end, close to the finish, take a page from Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live. He once said, we don't go on because we're ready. We go on because it's 11:30. So many times when I'm writing something or working on a speech or a video, I just say to myself, dude, it's 11:30. Number 14, make the first step embarrassingly small. Don't write the book. Write 3 sentences. Don't get in shape. Put your shoes by the door. Don't organize the house. Clean one drawer. The size of the first step and the odds of taking it are inversely related. Make the first move so small you'd be embarrassed not to do it. 15. Let it be easy. Difficulty is not evidence of virtue. Use the rotisserie chicken. Listen to the audiobook. Buy the precut vegetables. Take the shortcut when the shortcut actually works. Somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that if something isn't excruciatingly hard, it doesn't count. That's just self-inflicted pain with a superiority complex. Number 16: Prepare tomorrow's first move tonight. Make starting so easy that your morning self, who, let's be honest, you cannot trust, has almost no decisions to make. Open the document, set out the running clothes, Put the unpleasant task on your calendar with a day, a time, and a place. A few weeks ago, I scheduled clean my top dresser drawer for 2:30 on a Wednesday. And at half past 2 on that Wednesday, I opened that drawer and removed roughly 47 mismatched socks. I was very proud of myself. Willpower is usually unreliable. Appointments are usually unavoidable. Number 17, keep a waiting for list. I learned this one from David Allen's Getting Things Done. We're usually pretty good at tracking what we need to do, but we're much worse at tracking what other people owe us. The proposal somebody is reviewing, the document somebody promised to send, the answer you need before you can move forward. Write those things down in one place. Otherwise, your brain will keep trying to remember them, usually at 3 in the morning. Number 18, treat constant busyness as a warning, not a status symbol. When I ask someone, hey, how are you? And they answer, oh, I'm so busy, I become suspicious. Sometimes busyness means your life is full, but sometimes it means you're refusing to make choices, you're ignoring priorities, or you're just feeding your own ego. When everything feels urgent, stop adding. Subtract. Cancel something. Decline something. Leave some white space for a walk, a strange book, or an unexpected conversation. Or just 15 minutes of staring out the window. Not every square on the calendar needs to produce something. Now, that's the machinery of getting things done, but most of us don't do it along. Level 4: Work. 19. Send the recap email. After an important meeting, send a short note. Here's what we decided. Here's who is doing what. Here's when it's due. This helps everybody else. But it also helps you because translating a conversation into writing forces you to understand what actually happened. Now, AI can help organize that note, but don't let it do all the thinking. The thinking is part of the benefit. Number 20, make your boss's life easier. Here's a lesson from every workplace ever. Bosses divide employees into 2 categories: people who make my life harder And people who make my life easier. Especially early in your career, make sure you're in the second category. Understand what your boss is trying to accomplish. Help her achieve her goals. Take useful things off her plate. That's how you become indispensable. Number 21. Ask for the deadline, then ask for the real deadline. When do you need this? And when will somebody actually use this? Those are 2 very different questions. One answer might be Friday. The other might be the board meeting 3 Thursdays from now. Deadlines matter, but fake deadlines create unnecessary work and unnecessary panic. And once you understand that, you'll get the work done at the right time. And just as important, you won't inflict unnecessary deadlines on other people. Number 22. Lead with the request and bring a recommendation. Don't begin an email with 7 paragraphs of throat clearing. Tell people what you need. And if you're bringing somebody a problem, try to bring a proposed solution too. Diagnosis is useful. Prescription is essential. Instead of, this isn't working, try, this isn't working. Here's what I think is causing it, and here's what I recommend we do next. Number 23: Get good at something valuable that everybody else avoids. The spreadsheet nobody wants to own. The presentation nobody wants to give. The difficult conversation everybody keeps avoiding. Neglected skills have very little competition because everyone is fighting for the glamorous territory. But the neglected territory is sitting there, undefended. And number 24: For anybody who leads anybody, don't be the boss you had. Be the boss you should have had. Remember what your worst managers did, then do the opposite. Then remember what you desperately needed from them and never got, whether that's clarity, encouragement, honest feedback, or a second chance. Now go provide that to somebody else. Level 4, done. One level left. It's where all of this either adds up to a life or it doesn't. And the code I told you I saved for last is waiting for you at the end. 25, design your environment around your behavior. Store things where you use them, not where they're supposedly meant to go. Keep the medicine near the coffee maker if you take it with breakfast. Put the book on your pillow if you want to read before bed. And embrace strategic duplication. 2 chargers, 2 umbrellas, 6 pairs of reading glasses. Redundancy beats self-discipline. Number 26: Spend money eliminating recurring misery before buying occasional pleasure. Fix the terrible mattress before booking the fancy weekend. Replace the shoes that hurt your feet. Buy the second monitor that makes every workday easier. Pay to remove regular annoyances. The weekend in Antigua lasts 3 days. The mattress is every night of your year. Number 27: Create traditions on purpose. Sunday dinners, birthday breakfasts, the same ridiculous photo every Thanksgiving. Rituals turn passing time into a life you can actually remember. In our house, we celebrate every New Year's Day by making something called lucky pudding. The tradition began more than 20 years ago almost by accident. Now it has taken on the significance of a sacred religious rite. Don't wait for traditions to form on their own. Build them. Number 28: Stop trying to be normal. Normal is crowded. Conformity is boring. Every interesting person I know is interesting precisely at the spots where they stopped asking, Is this normal? And started asking, is this right for me? The parts of you that don't fit may be the parts most worth keeping. Number 29, compete with yourself, not with somebody else. Social comparison is a rigged game. You're comparing their outsides with your insides, their carefully selected victory or curated profile with your entire chaotic, messy, unedited life. So change the opponent. Was I better today than yesterday? Am I better at this than I was 6 months ago? Did I handle that situation more wisely than I would have before? Don't aim for an Olympic medal in somebody else's event. Aim for a personal best. And the final code, number 30: avoid unnecessary suffering, accept necessary suffering. Use that rotisserie chicken. Take the shortcut when it works. Eliminate friction that proves nothing. Don't expect achievement, love, creativity, or a meaningful life to cost you nothing. Anything worthwhile will demand effort, discomfort, criticism, uncertainty, and sacrifice. Lots of it. When you encounter those costs, don't automatically assume you're doing something wrong. You might simply be paying the price of admission. Eliminate the suffering that gets you nothing. Accept the suffering that moves you closer to something meaningful. So here they are, 30 cheat codes. Choose for Tuesdays. Give friendship an infrastructure. Get good at something others avoid. Build traditions. And learn which difficulties to remove and which to accept. But cheat codes only work if you enter them. So don't try all 30. Pick 2. One that would remove hassle from your life and one you've been resisting. Use both this week. And because I'm certain I missed some, tell me this: What's one life cheat code you had to learn? Put it in the comments. I read every single one, and that comment section might end up being even more useful than this video. Once again, if you want the whole list in one place, all 30 codes are on that one-page cheat sheet. It's free. The link is below, and it's a lot easier than rewinding this video.